Friday, August 23, 2013

Home cooking, traffic are sources of key air pollutants from China

American Chemical Society News: Almost 80 percent of air pollution involving soot that spreads from China over large areas of East Asia — impacting human health and fostering global warming — comes from city traffic and other forms of fossil-fuel combustion, such as home cooking with coal briquettes. That’s the conclusion of a study in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology, which resolves long-standing questions about sources of air pollution responsible for Asia’s infamous atmospheric brown clouds.

Örjan Gustafsson and colleagues from China, South Korea and the United States point out in their study that nobody has been certain about the exact sources of soot, or “black carbon,” air pollution from the People’s Republic of China. People can inhale these tiny particles deep into the lungs, and estimates implicate soot with 500,000 premature deaths annually in China alone. Black carbon in the atmosphere also absorbs sunlight, and scientists think it is second only to carbon dioxide as a factor in global warming. Gustafsson and his team set out to identify the exact sources of black carbon in China.

They describe using a powerful carbon-14 identification method to trace fully four-fifths of the black carbon emitted in China to incomplete combustion of fossil fuel such as coal briquettes used in home cookstoves and automobile and truck exhaust. “To mitigate near-term climate effects and improve air quality in East Asia, activities such as residential coal combustion and city traffic should be targeted,” they conclude...

June 2009 – At the studios of Cleanskies TV, I was interviewed about the costs of climate change, and discussed adaptation efforts underway in the US and around the world.

May 2009 – I helped draft the scenarios for Rising Waters, a multistakeholder scenarios effort focused on climate change adaptation in the Hudson Valley. The final report is now completed and available here.

May 2008 – I reviewed two books on climate and energy in the New Leader magazine: James Gustave Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, plus Robert Bryce's Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence.

January 2008 – A very local paper covers a very global issue.... The Litchfield County Times in northwestern Connectictut ran an article in January 2008 about Carbon-Based.

Now available: Climate Change Adaptation in 2011

A selection of my writings from 2011, plus some of my posts, as well as links... all focusing on the risks of climate change